In rock climbing and in construction, temporary bolts are often used to tether the climber or worker to an existing structure, such as a rock formation or the skeletal structure of an office building, so that if the climber or worker falls, the fall is short rather than deadly.
A common type of anchor bolt employs a mechanism or device that is generally adapted to engage the boundary, sides, or periphery of a hole or crevice by effective dimensional expansion, creating a frictional force of engagement. Such anchor bolts may be suitably termed “expansion bolts.” Expansion type anchor bolts typically use chocks or wedges that are remotely manually manipulated to produce a change in effective diameter or size, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,484,132 (see FIGS. 1 and 2) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,253,964 (see FIG. 3). They may be especially adapted for use in drilled holes, such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,011,281 (see FIG. 4), or for use in irregularly shaped crevices, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,715,568 (see FIG. 5).
The anchoring device portion of an anchor bolt can be as simple as a single, irregularly shaped chock that is, directly, manually manipulated within a crevice to present an effective size that prevents pulling the chock out of the crevice, as exemplified in U.S. Pat. No. 3,948,485 (see FIG. 6).
Another type of anchor bolt is that described in U.S. Publication No. 2005/0104385 (see FIG. 7), which employs a remotely manually manipulated, elongate toggling member as the anchoring device, that can be pivoted between a first orientation, in which the elongate axis of the toggling member is oriented substantially with the axis of the hole, to permit insertion into and through a hole, and a second orientation, in which the toggling member is oriented substantially perpendicular to the axis of the hole, so that it can span the hole and engage adjacent surfaces, and so cannot be pulled back through the hole.
The aforedescribed anchoring devices must be connected to a user to provide fall protection to the user. A typical form of connection is to provide a handle that can be grasped by the user's hand. The handle may also, or alternatively, be used or adapted for connecting to additional safety devices, such as a lanyard, rope or cable for, tethering the user to the anchor bolt.
Finally, the handle is connected to the anchoring device portion of the anchor bolt by a rope or cable. The use of a flexible tensile member, as opposed to, e.g., the rigid threaded rod used in the typical molly bolt, is highly advantageous, for rendering the anchor bolt resistant to shear forces. The flexible tensile member also, to a lesser extent, facilitates the user's mobility. There remains a need, and it is an objective of the present invention, to further facilitate the user's mobility.